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'Dan in Real Life'

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BY GENE SEYMOUR | gene.seymour@newsday.com; Andy Edelstein

October 26, 2007

Dan Burns seems, on the surface, to be yet another of those anal-retentive klutzes on which Steve Carell's been all but cornering the market. His eponymous "Dan in Real Life" is a widowed advice columnist intent on carrying on his gig while single-handedly raising his lively handful of daughters.

Eldest Jane (Alison Pill) insists she's ready to take the wheel of the family car while middle child Cara (Brittany Robertson) insists she's ready to take her infatuation with an older boy to the next level. Dan, overprotective to a fault, checks both these desires. "You're a great father," observes youngest child Lily (Marlene Lawston), "but you're not always a great dad."

An uneasy truce settles over this prickly brood as they head to Rhode Island for an annual family reunion. While taking a break from the din of chattering relatives, Dan wanders into a used bookstore where he meets a charmer named Marie (Juliette Binoche), the first woman to make him giddy since his wife's death. Just as Dan's ready to break the news of his good fortune to his loved ones, along comes younger brother Mitch (Dane Cook) with his fiancee: the same charmer named Marie. Awkward.

This is the kind of complication whose unraveling usually needs 30 minutes on commercial television; maybe less. Yet, however much it strains to stoke its sitcom-friendly premise, "Dan in Real Life" navigates its machinations with such laid-back assurance that it earns your attention, your respect and, ultimately, your heart.

Carell, who proved in last year's "Little Miss Sunshine" that he can be as graceful as he is goofy, helps make Dan a credible romantic lead by seamlessly blending his appealing and not-so-appealing attributes. One minute, he can be everybody's favorite warm-and-fuzzy uncle; the next, he can be so priggish and sullen that, if only for a minute, you feel sorry for Cook's character under siege from Dan's jealous jibes. (You heard right. You actually feel sorry for someone played by Dane Cook. We did say it was for a minute.) The whole movie seems to take its cue from Carell's sense of balance.

As for Binoche, let's just say that it's been a long time - longer than we can remember, frankly - since she's been this vivacious and ripe on screen. The movie's atmosphere, orchestrated by director Peter Hedges ("Pieces of April"), has given her whole persona a lift. Those aerobic exercises she performs with the rest of the cast are going to take her career to interesting places from here on in. Bank on it.

DAN IN REAL LIFE (PG-13). Steve Carell is an advice columnist and widower who falls for a woman (Juliette Binoche) he meets while attending a family reunion. He then finds out that his brother (Dane Cook) is engaged to the same woman. An awkward complication for an otherwise graceful comedy. With Dianne Wiest, John Mahoney, Alison Pill, Brittany Robertson, Marlene Lawston and Emily Blunt. Directed by Peter Hedges. 1:38 (mildly risque elements). At area theaters.